The Membranes, in conjunctionwith Mancunian artist Michael Trainor and some top scientists,have just announced a very special nightat Gorilla in Manchester on Saturday the 20th of July 2013.

John Robb’s legendary post punk outfit (who will perform with ex Fall bassistSteve Hanley) will host a night of great music, in depth conversations with scientists, experiments, art and poetry that will explain the universe, dark matter, the end of time, wormholes and all kinds of universe madness and science.

‘The Universe Explained’ is a very special event that combines science, art experiments, writers, poets and legendary post The Membranes. It’s an event unlike any other that will both explain the complex ideas about the origins of the universe and blow the minds of the audience with brilliant music, film and conversation.

There will be live interviews with key scientists about the latest theories on the universe that attempt to explain how it began, how it will end and all the bits in between. There will be talk of wormholes, dark matter, the Big Bang theory, the billion universe idea and the Higgs Boson particle.

There will also be a series of performances and experiments that will explain the complex in simple ways – a bit like one of those science lectures on TV at Christmas but with live art installations, poetry, particle ping pong and The Membranes (featuring ex Fall bassistSteve Hanley), playing a brand new set of songs to a specially commissioned film about the universe.

FULL LINE-UP:

1. Prof. John Ellis – leading theoretical physicist from the Large Hadron Collider in CERN will talk supersymmetry and dark matter (plus Q and A)

2. Dr. Radmila Topolovic – Royal Observatory Greenwich explains how we are all from the stars.

3. Dr. Stuart Clark – Astronomer, author and cosmology consultant for The New Scientist discusses the science behind his hugely popular fiction.

4. Jonathon Keats – Artist and Experimental Philosopher from San Francisco will be presenting (via skype) his ‘Pornography for God’ and ‘Microbial Academy’ installations.

5. Suzie Shrubb – composer and musician makes music from pulsars with 16 musicians live on stage.

7. The Membranes – post-punk legends perform a rare gig with John Robb and featuring Steve Hanley (ex –bassist of The Fall)

8. Michael Trainor – artist and writer turns the entire audience into sub-atomic particles and invites them to interact with his homemade Small (cheap) Hadron Collider.

9. Maurice Riordan – professor of poetry at Sheffield Hallam University reads from Dark Matters: Poems of Space PLUS experience the end of everythingin a coffee cup in Alix Poscharsky’s film, a philosophical animation of the universe by Sergio Lombardo, dance and cosmological events collide in performer Natalie Savva’s atmospheric short film and find out what the public actually know about the universe. Additional Universal sounds from DJ Dave Booth.